All I wanted all day today was for people to leave me alone, and I didn’t try to hide it. There was no disguising the frustration and impatience in my voice, because for once I wanted to be brusque and abrupt and just the teeniest bit rude. Too bad it didn’t work.

Well, I shouldn’t say that, exactly. Eventually I got the point across, but I had to be a little more blunt than I wanted to. And I had to whine a little. It helped that the Boss called just as I was getting back from the post office, and I was hot about the cancellation notice we got on our health insurance. I thought I’d dealt with this problem two weeks ago, when I faxed a copy of our canceled check and they told me they had credited our payment to somebody else. They told me they were going to fix it, too, but I had to phone them again today to make that happen. Bastards.

But anyway. The Boss called just at the moment when my blood was boiling the hottest. I told him about the insurance problem, and I told him (for the fifteenth time) that I have an audit tomorrow. I told him loudly and I told him clearly, and he backed off. I didn’t hear from him again until the end of the day. Maybe you can hear my heart pounding as I write about it. I’m still that steamed.

So, the audit. Everyone knows (including me) that I sail through these audits, but the reason is that I’m prepared. And this time I haven’t had any time to get prepared, because of the other problems I’ve been dealing with (amply and tediously outlined in recent entries). So what did I have? I had today. And what did that mean to the people who kept bugging me? Not a heck of a lot.

I’ll tell you one thing. I didn’t do any excessive cleaning for the auditor, the way I have in the past. I didn’t even do any trimming of the weeds along my walkway, as I’d been intending to do for, oh, two months. Let him hack his way to my door, just the way people I actually want to visit me have to do. I just hope he doesn’t fall in the hole the landlord left in my driveway. I suppose I should leave the cones there to warn him, but it’s tempting.